Lighthouse Tracking: Basics

[@Tahllia]

I came here years alter to say, great video! I hope there's more like this dealing with the lighthouses and what-not

[@vk2zay]

Great introduction to Lighthouse Scott. I think you explain it better than I do!

[@tristanwegner]

Aren't you Alan Yates - the key developer/inventor of the lighthouse tracking system?

[@vk2zay]

@@tristanwegner yes

[@proplection]

after watching this twice i finally understand it! amazing!

[@fnmk8864]

Expert teardown. Look forward to your other videos. Thanks!!!!

[@exilis2]

good that youre back :)

[@evanbarnes9984]

Hey man, I love all your videos and projects. You've got a very Matthias Wandel kind of thing going on, with your own unique spin. Keep it up!

[@ERol-du3rd]

Great video, thanks for the info

[@xx39abc]

I rarely comment but : Wow that was a great video !!

[@coxsj]

Teensy is a great choice. An under-appreciated group of micros.

[@LanoChaos]

Thank you so much for your description! :) Awesome.

[@eddraper]

Interesting exploration (as usual)

[@surfcello]

Sorry what I don't get is: where is the photo diode? In the boxes that contain the spinning lasers? If so, I guess it works on reflection off the tracked object. But how do you know which part of the signal actually stems from the object? Is there a retro-reflector attached to it?

[@ScottRumschlag]

The photodiode is on the tracked object, the thing I'm holding and moving around. Timing and data is sent back to the computer via the USB cable.

[@artemiyzubarev7068]

I have one question. If here're more than one stations, will motors rotating faster?

[@НикитаЗападнов]

Hi, Scott, I need your help. I can't build working schematic on LM358 opamp with components from Alan's Yates post. Please tell me, where I can find working schematic with BPW34 with a fast opamp like the MCP6024? Hope for your help, thanks!

[@ScottRumschlag]

Hello, I'm not sure, this project was a while ago and I ended up using the prebuilt modules with the basic circuitry already implemented. Wish I could be more helpful, good luck!

[@НикитаЗападнов]

@@ScottRumschlag Okay Understood, will look for modules of Triad Semi Thanks a lot for your quick answer!

[@DiyintheGhetto]

Hello can you help me out on something. I'm trying to figure out the height and width of the base station box. Sense i do not have one can you help me out and let me know what it is thank you.

[@ScottRumschlag]

I sold them shortly after making these videos, the specs should be available elsewhere.

[@DiyintheGhetto]

I tried looking unless I'm phrasing it wrong. I can not find specs on it. I found specs on everything else but the base station light houses.

[@akovaski]

Nice, this was an unexpected project. I'm curious how positioning will work without set tower positions.

[@НикитаЗападнов]

Very interesting video

[@FatNonsense]

this is basically 3d tracking, right? I made a similar project back in 2009 with 2 wiimotes. It was surprisingly accurate and fast.

[@ScottRumschlag]

Yes, I was hoping that with enough reliability and accuracy it could be a measurement system.

[@FatNonsense]

I did that for a desktop sized setup and had sub-mm accuracy. Good enough to make a virtual keyboard on a desk if I had IR-LEDs on my fingers. We also did the calibration with a smiliar rectangle as you do. It was from a paper from someone called Zhang. With that we could eliminate lens distortion and all sort of stuff.

[@ivanstroganov5458]

FatNonsense measurement system for what? I always had an idea for a follow focus system that worked like that. you'd have the sensors on the camera and your subject/actor had a little IR beacon on him and the system on the camera would constantly measure the distance and control the motorized follow focus accordingly.

[@FatNonsense]

What we did (a fellow student and me) back then was a system/framework to track infrared points in a space that is observed by those 2 wiimotes. It could track up to 4 points simultanously with 100Hz refreshrate (refreshrate of the wiimote). So with the resulting 3d coordinates you can do whatever you want. As I said, it is a poisition tracking system in a 3D space. Yes, you could use it to keep track of the position of an object (with an infrared LED attached) and adjust the focus of a camera accordingly. It would be a straight forward process to implements this, I don't see any difficulties. With the 3D tracking you could even make the camera pan and tilt to keep the object in frame, not only in focus.

[@BuddyCrotty]

5 months...we were getting worried. =)

[@FLyyyT_]

would you try an automatic book page-turner with page scanning?

[@ScottRumschlag]

I could, what's the motivation though?

[@FLyyyT_]

Most publishers would probably not like it. But it could be a needed solution for digitally documenting literature's that have no digital version for far future reference. If it's a financial motivation, I'm not so sure

[@kirankumar-om2xf]

Hey brother, Please read this fully. Really appreciate your work. Gotta say recently I started to involve with this say about a month ago and I was really lacking a lot of basic info until somehow I found your videos. Thank you so much for breaking it down in so easier to understand way Believe me, like me all newbie's gonna get a lot of knowledge from your videos. Please do some more work on this. Okay, Besides I've question would you mind breaking down the "mathematical equation" involved in calculation of angle? If it's elementary math also please do it. A request! I did a lot of research though but couldn't find exactly. The way you explain is really explicit so I thought to mention it. If you do this it would be of a great help for me as well as for the posterity. Hoping to get some reply... At the least, From scott or anyone please provide from helpful links pertaining to the equation related. Thanks in advance.

[@muh1h1]

you should work together with cnLohr and his LibSurvive project :)

[@ScottRumschlag]

That's very interesting, I saw one of his earlier videos on the "Watchmen protocol" but hadn't realized it turned into a full-blown project. A quick look seems to show they're still working through the fcal strategy so perhaps I can compare notes with them on that point.

[@SCHaworth]

this is how i thought this worked. I knew the light recievers were too simple to be cameras, so they must just detect light simply, and that the lasers spun on that motor. The only thing that made sense was time+position of laser, but also each sensor on the recieving tracker know each others position (more time factors)

[@olivier2553]

That's a very clear explanation. But I did not understand what is your goal with this tracking business.

[@ScottRumschlag]

You could use the tracked object as a measurement tool in 3 dimensions.